Product Signals
Product Signals turns your recorded sales and customer calls into a ranked, evidence-backed view of your product. It finds every time a customer asks for something your product doesn't do yet (an unmet need) and every time a customer reacts well to a specific capability (a strength). It groups the same request across calls and accounts, and places each product area on one chart: customer reaction against the number of accounts with unmet needs. Every ask keeps the customer's exact words and what your team said back on the call.
Key facts
- What it is: voice-of-the-customer analysis built from conversations. It covers customer asks (feature requests and limitations they want removed) and praise, ranked by how many accounts raise them.
- Built from: the meetings and calls ArcGlass analyzes, whether captured with ArcGlass Listen or imported from a connected source such as Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Gong, Fireflies, Fathom or Granola. Emails and chat messages are not used.
- Who it's for: product managers, customer success and CX leaders, product marketers, and executives deciding what to build, fix, protect or say.
- Evidence: every customer quote is checked against the call transcript, and a quote that can't be found word for word is thrown out.
- Nothing to fill in: there are no surveys, feedback portals or manual tags, and no CRM is needed. It reads the calls you already record.
- Freshness: each call is read when ArcGlass analyzes it, and the page's numbers are recalculated every day.
- Where: in the console's left navigation, under What you hear → Product signals.
Not the same as product-usage signals
In product-led sales, "product signals" usually means in-app usage data used to spot buying intent, such as logins, feature adoption or hitting a plan limit. ArcGlass Product Signals is different. It comes from what customers say in conversations, not what they click. Usage data shows what people do in your product. Product Signals shows what they want from it, how they react to it, and how well your team answers them.
Questions it answers
- What should we build next, and for how many accounts?
- Which product areas do customers love, and which need work?
- What do customers keep asking for that we can't do yet?
- When customers ask, does our team answer clearly or deflect?
- Where do our pitch and our customers disagree?
How it works
- Reads each call. When a call is analyzed, ArcGlass reads the transcript for unmet needs and strengths. It looks only at what customers and prospects say, not at your own team describing a limitation.
- Checks every quote. Each finding must quote the customer word for word. If the quote isn't in the transcript, the finding is dropped rather than repaired. Low-confidence findings are dropped too.
- Grades the answer. For each ask, ArcGlass finds your team's reply on the same call and grades it Answered, Partial, Deflected or No answer.
- Groups and files. The same request from different calls joins one ask, matched by meaning rather than exact wording, with a short title and a one-sentence statement. Asks and praise are never grouped together. Each ask is filed under one of your product areas, and anything that fits none goes to Unclassified. New calls never add a product area.
- Counts and ranks. Every day, ArcGlass recounts each ask and each product area for every time window and ranks them again.
What counts
| Kind | Counts | Doesn't count |
|---|---|---|
| Unmet need | A customer asks for something the product doesn't do today, or names a limitation they want removed. | General complaints, off-topic asides, or your own team describing a limitation. |
| Strength | A customer reacts well to a specific, named capability. | Pleasantries like "sounds good" or "great" that aren't tied to a capability. |
The chart: customer reaction against unmet needs
The page opens on Overview of every product area. Each dot is a product area. Higher means customers react better to it. Further right means more accounts need something it doesn't do yet.
- Up, from Weak to Loved (Customer reaction): how many accounts praised something specific in the area, and how often.
- Right, from Few to Many (Accounts with unmet needs): how many different accounts asked for something the area doesn't do yet.
Two lines split the chart into four corners. Each dot takes its corner's colour, and three corners are lightly shaded (Maintain stays plain). Every corner is labeled with its name, how many areas sit in it and what it means, so the chart needs no separate key.
| Corner | What the chart says | What it usually means |
|---|---|---|
| Protect (top left) | Loved, few unmet needs | Working well. Keep it reliable and use it as proof in sales. |
| Extend the lead (top right) | Loved, many unmet needs | Customers value it and want more of it. The asks here build on a strength. |
| Maintain (bottom left) | Less loved, few unmet needs | Little pressure either way. Keep an eye on it. |
| Build or fix (bottom right) | Less loved, many unmet needs | Customers want more and react weakly. Building here changes the picture the most. |
The corners are relative to your own product. Each axis is split at the median of your plotted areas, so roughly half your areas fall on each side, and an area exactly on the median counts as up or right. "Build or fix" doesn't mean an area is failing. It means customers ask more of it and praise it less than your typical area.
Areas with no praise yet have no customer reaction to plot. They're listed under the chart as No reaction yet, and you can click one to open it.
Hover a dot or its name to see a card with:
- the corner the area is in
- Reaction, for example "4 of 5 accounts said what it changes for them": of the accounts that discussed the area, how many praised something specific in it
- Unmet needs, for example "5 accounts · 18 asks"
- See what they ask for →, which opens the area's page
Pin a card to keep it open while you compare areas. Pins are remembered in your browser. Click a dot to open that area. You can collapse the chart to save space.
Where to next: three ways in
Below the chart, three cards each answer one question and show a live count of what's behind them.
What to build next
Customer asks, ranked by how many accounts made them, with asks from Build or fix areas first. Each row shows the ask's title and one-line statement, its product area and corner, and the number of accounts. Click an ask to open it.
Create a task adds the ask to ArcGlass Tasks with its title and statement, where it can be assigned and followed up.
Asks heard only once in the selected time window aren't listed here. They sit under Emerging on their area's page.
Gaps between what we say and what customers ask
This page reads what your team says in calls against what customers say back.
What we say we do lists the claims your team makes about the product across calls. Each claim shows the customer demand behind it, for example "12 asks · 7 accounts across Reporting & Analytics", and how many meetings it was said in. A claim nobody asks about says so.
Below the claims are six kinds of gap. Each is a different problem with a different fix:
| Gap | What it means | When it appears |
|---|---|---|
| Asked about, not in our pitch | Customers keep asking about it; we never say it. | A product area with 5 or more asks that none of your claims covers. |
| We promise more than it delivers | Most asks in the area get deflected or no answer. | An area your claims cover, with 5 or more asks, where at least half were deflected or unanswered. |
| Met with "we already have that" | We say it; customers say they have it already. | In at least 30% of the calls where the claim comes up, customers reply with some version of "we already have that." |
| Only comes up when we raise it | Customers never bring it up themselves. | The claim lands when your team says it, but no customer has raised the subject first. |
| In our pitch, rarely said in calls | On the slides, but barely heard in the room. | The claim came up in two or fewer conversations. |
| Rests on one or two accounts | Support comes from a single relationship, not the market. | The claim has strong support, but from one or two accounts only. |
Asked about, not in our pitch and We promise more than it delivers come straight from your calls and count all of them, not just the selected time window. The other four rate your claims. They appear only after someone in your workspace has generated pitch options with What our pitch could be, a beta available on request that drafts a pitch from what customers actually said. If none of the six has anything to show, the page says Not enough yet rather than guessing.
Product areas
Every product area appears as a card, ranked by demand. Each card shows the area's asks and accounts, its corner, and how many more asks it got than in the previous period, for example "+4 this period". You can filter by corner: All, Protect, Extend the lead, Maintain, Build or fix.
Open an area to see its own page, with three sections:
- Unmet needs: asks heard at least twice in the time window, ranked by demand.
- Strengths: capabilities customers praised at least twice in the time window.
- Emerging: asks heard once in the time window. These are early, and worth watching.
Each ask shows its accounts and asks, how many accounts are new to it (for example "+2 new"), and its status.
Inside an ask
Click any ask to open its panel.
- Status (unmet needs only): New, Reviewing, Tracked, Answered, Won't do or Muted, for your team's triage.
- Numbers: Asked (how many times), Accounts, Unanswered (deflected or no answer) and Last heard.
- Answer quality: a bar and a line such as "3 answered, 1 partial, 4 deflected, 2 no answer given".
- Accounts: the companies that asked, each labeled with where the conversation stood: in discovery, in evaluation, or customer.
- Evidence: the newest quotes first, ten at a time, up to the 50 most recent. Each shows the company and date, the customer's exact words, and Rep: followed by your team's reply on that call, or "no answer given".
- Canonical answer: the answer reps should give when this comes up, written once by your team. Saving it sets the status to Answered, and the answer stays on the ask with the date it was written.
Asked and Accounts follow the selected time window. The Unanswered count, answer quality, account list and evidence cover every time the ask came up.
Answer quality grades
| Grade | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Answered | A specific, actionable answer: the capability exists, or a clear no. |
| Partial | Acknowledged and partly addressed, but the core of the ask was left open. |
| Deflected | Promised future work, offered to check, or redirected, with no commitment or date. |
| No answer | No reply to the ask appears in the transcript. |
Unanswered counts Deflected plus No answer. A clear "no" counts as Answered, because the customer got an answer.
How the numbers are calculated
- Time window: 7 days, 30 days, 90 days (the default) or All time. The window applies to the chart, the product areas and the lists of asks.
- Asks and accounts: asks count each time a customer raised the request, so one call can add more than one. Accounts are the distinct companies behind those calls. A call with no identified company adds to asks but not to accounts.
- Ranking asks (demand): 45% how many accounts asked, 20% how many times it was asked, 20% how many accounts asked for the first time in this window, and 15% the asks weighted by how far along each conversation was, so asks from demos, technical evaluations and proofs of value count for more than asks from discovery calls. Each part is scaled against the highest value in your workspace for the same window, so scores compare within your workspace and never across companies. Breadth comes first on purpose: ten accounts asking once outrank one account asking ten times.
- Answer quality stays separate from demand. How much customers want something and how well your team answers it are different questions, so how an ask was answered doesn't move its rank.
- Customer reaction: 60% how many accounts praised the area and 40% how many times, scaled against the highest values among your product areas in the same window.
- Ranking product areas: a blend of how many accounts ask and how many asks, weighted toward accounts.
- "+N this period": how many more asks the area got than in the previous period of the same length. With All time selected there's no earlier period, so it shows the total.
- "+N new": accounts asking for this for the first time in this window.
How it stays current
- As each call is analyzed: ArcGlass reads the call, checks the quotes, and files the asks and praise straight away.
- Every day: the counts, chart and rankings are recalculated, so a new call shows up on the page within a day and the 7-, 30- and 90-day windows move forward.
- On demand: Rebuild in the page header recalculates now. It can take a few minutes.
You don't need to trigger anything. As long as calls are being analyzed, Product Signals keeps itself current.
Getting started
- Calls are read once it's turned on for your workspace. The page is in every workspace by default, but ArcGlass reads calls for it only after Product Signals is turned on for yours. If the page stays empty after your calls are analyzed, ask your ArcGlass contact to turn it on. ArcGlass can also read the calls you had before, so you don't start from zero.
- It needs at least 10 analyzed calls in your workspace. Until then the page says "Signals appear as calls are processed", because an ask means more when it repeats across accounts.
- A short window can be empty. If nothing came up in the selected 7-, 30- or 90-day window, the page says so and offers Show all time.
- Who can use it: anyone who can read conversations in your workspace can open it. It's a workspace-wide view: its counts and quotes cover every analyzed call in the workspace. Changing a status, writing a canonical answer and Rebuild need edit access, which the Member, Manager and Organization Owner roles have.
- Share exactly what you see: the time window, area, ask and page you're on are all in the link, so a link pasted into Slack opens the same view.
A weekly routine
- Before a roadmap review, open What to build next and turn the top asks into tasks.
- When an ask keeps getting deflected, write its canonical answer so the next person who opens it sees the agreed line.
- Before a positioning or messaging review, open Gaps and start with "Asked about, not in our pitch".
- To see what's changing, compare the 30-day and 90-day windows and look at which areas moved corner.
What it doesn't do
- It reads calls only. Emails, chat and support tickets aren't used today.
- It doesn't know what you've shipped. "Answered" means your team agreed on an answer, not that a feature shipped.
- New calls don't add product areas. ArcGlass drafts your starting set from your own calls when Product Signals is set up. After that, an ask that fits none of them goes to Unclassified.
- Scores are relative. Corners and rankings compare your product areas and asks with each other, not with other companies.
- Quotes show the company and date, not the speaker's name.
Frequently asked questions
What is ArcGlass Product Signals?+
Is Product Signals the same as product-usage signals?+
Where does Product Signals get its data?+
How does ArcGlass decide what counts as a customer ask?+
Can I trust the quotes in Product Signals?+
How often does Product Signals update?+
What do Protect, Extend the lead, Maintain and Build or fix mean?+
Why did a product area move to a different corner?+
How does Product Signals rank asks?+
What does "unanswered" mean in Product Signals?+
Do I need a CRM or revenue data?+
Do customers or reps need to tag or fill in anything?+
Who can see Product Signals?+
Why is my Product Signals page empty?+
Glossary
- Ask: one customer request, grouped across every call where it came up. Also called a theme.
- Unmet need: an ask for something the product doesn't do today, or for a limitation to be removed.
- Strength: a specific, named capability a customer reacted well to.
- Product area: a part of your product that asks and praise are filed under, such as Reporting & Analytics.
- Account: a company you have calls with.
- Customer reaction: how much customers praise a product area, from how many accounts praised it and how often.
- Answer quality: how your team replied to an ask on the call: Answered, Partial, Deflected or No answer.
- Canonical answer: the agreed answer to an ask, written once by your team.
- Emerging: an ask heard only once in the time window.
- Time window: the period the page counts: 7, 30 or 90 days, or All time.
Related
- Landscape: competitors and market themes named in your calls.
- Questions: the real questions customers ask, organized so you answer each once.
- Tasks: where an ask goes when you create a task from it.
- Calls & Meetings: connect Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams recordings.
- Set up & onboarding: step-by-step guides to connect Gong, Fireflies, Fathom, Granola, HubSpot calls and other sources.
- ArcGlass Listen: a free notetaker for macOS and Windows that records and transcribes meetings on your device.